“God is never alone” – Trinity Sunday reflection

Trinity Sunday.
God is never alone.
At the heart of God is relationship,
interdependence,
of Father, Son, Holy Spirit,
creator, redeemer, sustainer,
Source of all being, Eternal Word, Fire of Love,
three in one,
beyond words.
 
God is never alone,
and nor are we.
Jesus promises:
“I shall be with you always,
to the end of the age.”
And the promises of God are more trustworthy
than any human word.
Never alone.
At the heart of God is interdependence,
in the depths of being more powerful than death
is a vulnerability that says
“I can’t exist in isolation.”
And invites us to say the same,
to know that love of neighbour
is not pious sentimentality,
but a deep acknowledgement of dependence,
mutuality, interconnectedness.
The love of God invites us to say:
“I can’t live without you.”
To say it to our neighbours,
siblings, sisters, brothers,
to our enemies, and all the ‘others’
we would like to other,
but it turns out we can’t.
We need each other too much to turn away
from people who don’t look like us
don’t sound, think, live like us.
 
God knows,
we need each other.
God shows,
in God’s own interdependence,
that our need for one another,
our dependence on each other,
is itself an image of God.  
 
Behind locked doors
or on a mountain top,
in supermarket queues,
in lonely rooms,
Jesus says:
“I will be with you always.”
On hospital wards,
on streets erupting in violence,
in homes that are not safe,
in prison cells,
in all the places where decisions are made
that could mean life or death,
Jesus says:
“I will be with you always.”
 
What would it look like
to live like that is true?
Let go of the temptation of self-sufficiency,
the desire for independence, power,
some way of asserting whatever little control
we fool ourselves we have.
Let go.
“Do not be afraid.”
Let go, let yourself go,
let yourself fall into the reality
of dependence on God,
who is always ready to catch you
and enfold you in love.
 
Ironically, this isolation
is a revelation
that we were never separate,
never self-made,
always connected, dependent,
reliant on our neighbour,
and our neighbour on us.
There is no-one
Who is not essential.
To love your neighbour as yourself
is to know your neighbour and yourself
to be equal participants
in the dance of God’s unending love.
 
“I will be with you always”
says Jesus,
and yet…
And yet people of peace are attacked in the streets
for daring to speak the truth that Black Lives Matter.
And yet the systems still exist
that keep the rich rich and the poor poor,
keep refugees out
keep women in their place.
And yet, there is so much fear and pain in the world
that sometimes we who have the luxury of choice
can hardly bear to look.
“I will be with you always”
is not the same as
“It’s all going to be ok.”
 
We are never alone,
with a God who is never alone,
who never promises easy fixes,
but only endless love.
We are the outworking of that love,
called to be the hands that live that love,
that give, receive,
hold placards, bind up wounds,
the ears that listen,
the lips that speak peace,
but only the kind of peace
that comes from justice.
By God and with God we are called
to make real what is already true:
we are all interdependent.
 
Am I my brother’s keeper?
The answer has always been ‘yes’.
Keeper of every sibling, every neighbour,
every key worker, every no-hoper,
every tree and rainforest and leaf and insect.
And they are my keeper too.
This has always been true.  
The hands that formed me
measured the waters of the deep.
The hands that formed my dearest friend
marked off the heavens with a span.
The hands that formed my worst enemy
enclosed the dust of the earth in a measure.  
The eternal one from whom all wisdom,
understanding, justice comes
knows ever hair on your head.
 
There is nothing too vast
or too small,
nothing too joyful,
and nothing too hard,   
to be held in the holiness of God,
enfolded in the interdependent
never-ending embrace of the Trinity,
all bound up in the eternal movement of love,
held in the hand, in the heart,
of God who lives and moves in us,
and we in God.
 
Trinity Sunday.
God is never alone.
And nor are you.
Amen.
 

Advertisement